Google Apologizes For Poaching Rival’s Code
Google has issued an apology for using data lifted from a rival Chinese search company. An update to Google’s Chinese search portal added a new tool called the Pinyin Input Method Editor which allows a user to input characters in Pinyin, a phonetic system for writing Chinese characters in Roman letters.
Unfortunately for Google the initial release of its Pinyin tool used a dictionary of Chinese words and characters stolen from rival search company Sohu. The dictionary is used to offer auto-complete suggestions for Pinyin based on matching Chinese words and names to their Pinyin equivalents.
The conflict was discovered because the Sohu engineers had added their names to Sudo dictionary for convenience and those names showed up in Google’s predictive auto-complete.
Sohu complained about the use of its dictionary last week, but Chinese users had already pointed out similarities between the two shortly after the release of the Google tool.
Sohu then demanded that Google stop using its Pinyin IME dictionary and asked for an apology — giving Google three days (until today) to reply.
Although Google still hasn’t said how the Sohu dictionary came to be in Google’s software, they have since removed it and offered an apology on the Chinese language Google blog.
